Anthropometric and three-compartment body composition differences between super league and championship rugby league players: Considerations for the 2015 season and beyond

Super League (SL) and Championship (RLC) rugby league players will compete against each other in 2015 and beyond. To identify possible discrepancies, this study compared the anthropometric profile and body composition of current SL (full-time professional) and RLC (part-time semi-professional) players using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). A cross-sectional design involved DXA scans on 67 SL (n=29 backs, n=38 forwards) and 46 RLC (n=20 backs, n=26 forwards) players during preseason. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare age, stature, body mass, soft tissue fat percentage, bone mineral content (BMC), total and regional (i.e., arms, legs and trunk) fat and lean mass between SL forwards, SL backs, RLC forwards and RLC backs. No significant differences in age, stature or body mass were observed. SL forwards and backs had relatively less soft tissue fat (17.5 ± 3.7 and 14.8 ± 3.6 vs. 21.4 ± 4.3 and 20.8 ± 3.8%), greater BMC (4,528 ± 443 and 4,230 ± 447 vs. 4,302 ± 393 and 3,971 ± 280 g), greater trunk lean mass (37.3 ± 3.0 and 35.3 ± 3.8 vs. 34.9 ± 32.3 and 32.3 ± 2.6 kg) and less trunk fat mass (8.5 ± 2.7 and 6.2 ± 2.1 vs. 10.7 ± 2.8 and 9.5 ± 2.9 kg) than RLC forwards and backs. Observed differences may reflect selection based on favourable physical attributes, or training adaptations. To reduce this discrepancy, some RLC players should reduce fat mass and increase lean mass, which may be of benefit for the 2015 season and beyond

Quenched invariance principle for random walks in balanced random environment

We consider random walks in a balanced random environment in $\mathbb{Z}^d$, $d\geq 2$. We first prove an invariance principle (for $d\ge2$) and the transience of the random walks when $d\ge 3$ (recurrence when $d=2$) in an ergodic environment which is not uniformly elliptic but satisfies certain moment condition. Then, using percolation arguments, we show that under mere ellipticity, the above results hold for random walks in i.i.d. balanced environments.Comment: Published online in Probab. Theory Relat. Fields, 05 Oct 2010. Typo (in journal version) corrected in (26

On complex surfaces diffeomorphic to rational surfaces

In this paper we prove that no complex surface of general type is diffeomorphic to a rational surface, thereby completing the smooth classification of rational surfaces and the proof of the Van de Ven conjecture on the smooth invariance of Kodaira dimension.Comment: 34 pages, AMS-Te

On arbitrages arising from honest times

In the context of a general continuous financial market model, we study whether the additional information associated with an honest time gives rise to arbitrage profits. By relying on the theory of progressive enlargement of filtrations, we explicitly show that no kind of arbitrage profit can ever be realised strictly before an honest time, while classical arbitrage opportunities can be realised exactly at an honest time as well as after an honest time. Moreover, stronger arbitrages of the first kind can only be obtained by trading as soon as an honest time occurs. We carefully study the behavior of local martingale deflators and consider no-arbitrage-type conditions weaker than NFLVR.Comment: 25 pages, revised versio

Identificación del índice de vulnerabilidad territorial a partir de modelos jerárquicos y heurísticos aplicando SOA

Auxiliar de InvestigaciónEn el proyecto se realiza el diseño y desarrollo de 4 servicios web implementando los modelos de toma de decisión (AHP, AHP FUZZY, ELECTRE y PROMETHEE), encargados de procesar datos obtenidos en campo en la primera fase del proyecto que se realizó a través de encuestas, formatos de entrevistas, talleres y metodologías de análisis. Los datos se procesaran de acuerdo al modelo de toma de decisión seleccionado, generando como resultado final un indicador de vulnerabilidad territorial.PregradoIngeniero de Sistema

Grain Destruction in Interstellar Shocks

Interstellar shock waves can erode and destroy grains present in the shocked gas, primarily as the result of sputtering and grain-grain collisions. Uncertainties in current estimates of sputtering yields are reviewed. Results are presented for the simple case of sputtering of fast grains being stopped in cold gas. An upper limit is derived for sputtering of refractory grains in C-type MHD shocks: shock speeds v_s \gtrsim 50 \kms are required for return of more than 30\% of the silicate to the gas phase. Sputtering can also be important for removing molecular ice mantles from grains in two-fluid MHD shock waves in molecular gas. Recent estimates of refractory grain lifetimes against destruction in shock waves are summarized, and the implications of these short lifetimes are discussed.Comment: To appear in Shocks in Astrophysics, ed. T.J. Millar. Talk given at conference Shocks in Astrophysics, Manchester, Jan. 1995. 13 pages with 6 figures: uuencoded compressed postscript. Also available as POPe-633 on http://astro.princeton.edu/~library/prep.htm

Multifragmentation of a very heavy nuclear system (I): Selection of single-source events

A sample of `single-source' events, compatible with the multifragmentation of very heavy fused systems, are isolated among well-measured 155Gd+natU 36AMeV reactions by examining the evolution of the kinematics of fragments with Z>=5 as a function of the dissipated energy and loss of memory of the entrance channel. Single-source events are found to be the result of very central collisions. Such central collisions may also lead to multiple fragment emission due to the decay of excited projectile- and target-like nuclei and so-called `neck' emission, and for this reason the isolation of single-source events is very difficult. Event-selection criteria based on centrality of collisions, or on the isotropy of the emitted fragments in each event, are found to be inefficient to separate the two mechanisms, unless they take into account the redistribution of fragments' kinetic energies into directions perpendicular to the beam axis. The selected events are good candidates to look for bulk effects in the multifragmentation process.Comment: 39 pages including 15 figures; submitted to Nucl. Phys.

'Vigilant Hospitality': The Online Imperative and Teaching Cultural Studies

Information technology (IT) sees information as a fluid, to be stored, regulated and exchanged. This is a profoundly economic model, whose dreams are those of the marketplace – and now, university managers. But no teacher, of course, holds that teaching can be reduced to the movement of information from one point to another. Teaching is never quite absorbed into the models of IT. Where they meet, we do not have the utopia of the virtual classroom, at last freed from the strictures of timetables and the face-to-face; we have, rather, the grinding of two radically irreducible models. This has nothing to do with Luddism; on the contrary, it is the value and necessity of IT for us at present, as teachers. At a time when the tertiary sector’s massive investment in IT is motivated in part by its own dream of the teacherless classroom, one of the pressing tasks for us may be simply to argue as rigorously as we can the structural necessity of our own position as teachers, without nostalgia or humanist sentimentality

Weakly non-ergodic Statistical Physics

We find a general formula for the distribution of time averaged observables for weakly non-ergodic systems. Such type of ergodicity breaking is known to describe certain systems which exhibit anomalous fluctuations, e.g. blinking quantum dots and the sub-diffusive continuous time random walk model. When the fluctuations become normal we recover usual ergodic statistical mechanics. Examples of a particle undergoing fractional dynamics in a binding force field are worked out in detail. We briefly discuss possible physical applications in single particle experiments